Case Files from Vancouver
by Gray-Eyed-Umbrella
Summary: Stories from the abandoned city on Canada's West Coast. First: An Indian girl recounts, as vaugely as possible, her youth in the war.


[Navdeep is a solemn looking woman, about twenty-seven, but the years have taken their toll. Her long black braid is streaked with gray. Her forehead is lined. She was one of the men and women who took their stand on the mainland of British Columbia.]

**Why not Vancouver Island? **

Right to it, then. Alright. Vancouver Island wasn't home. We weren't defending anything. Besides, we heard things…

**Like what?**

You know. Like everywhere else. People… trying to survive. It's rough on the North of the island, especially during winter. Feet of snow… My family rented a lake house up there once, the locals had cautionary tales. Even during peacetime.

**But you were far enough North to feel the effects anyways. **

Fuck no. Did you know, when we hosted the Winter Olympics, we had to truck in snow for the events? We didn't get enough, even on the mountains! Vancouver is temperate. Warm. Years will go by where we never see snow. Zombies were a threat, even in winter.

**Most areas saw extra snowfall-**

Not us. Well. One year, yeah. Just one, though. The rest was just freezing rain.

**But refugees were still a problem. **

Yes and no. Most people heading North knew better than to settle in Vancouver. Better safe than sorry. Folks from Washington and Oregon especially, they were bright enough to know we weren't the great white north. The bigger problem was people bringing in relatives.

**Relatives? **

Vancouver has a very high Asian population. In fact, an area in Metro Van, it has the highest population density of Indians outside of India? Britain has more, but we have the most in the smallest area…

[Navdeep falls silent for a full minute, her eyes unfocused. From her name, it's not hard to guess her ethnicity.]

Of course, those statistics will have changed.

**Did most of these come before the war?**

Steady flow, I guess. Could've been how it started, you get some granny coming over, she's been bitten, you get some poor well-meaning fucker trying to protect her…

**Did that happen often?**

That scenario? I don't know. I'm third generation. My parents, my grandparents, they were all here. There are cousins I… You never know what happened to family. Especially when it's a big family. When we're spread out all over… And we were spread out, there are plenty of people…

[She falls silent again.]

I was seven years old when it all started. There wasn't anywhere great to hold our ground, but we managed. We moved around a lot, you'd be surprised how easy it was to sneak around the suburbs.

**But you ended up downtown.**

Near the end, yes.

**You would've been fourteen when-**

Yeah. I know.

**Did the Canadian government ever attempt to- **

No. No, they didn't. Our government ignored us, and yours did too. We never had the fucking resources. Or, at least we didn't, after they wasted them all trying to defend the east. The heart of Canada. The seat of parliament and the holy fucking grail, Toronto. Most of our soldiers cut and run after that clusterfuck. Every country has it's 'Yonkers'. Forget it. Every country should have its motherfucking Toronto.

**So you were on your own.**

Start to finish.

**If you could describe-**

I'm going to cut you off here, again. You know what pisses me off most about this? No one heard about it! No one! New York is lost, the sky grows dark, hope is lost, poor Americans! Every single one of our cities fell. We're still clearing. I'll bet you don't even know what happened.

**I want to hear it in your words.**

Fine.

[Navdeep takes a deep breath, as if preparing herself.]

I wasn't feral. Never got to that point. My parents… bit it a few months before. It was below zero. Freezing rain, some hail. No snow. I… I was pretty bad at that point. Thin. All bruised. Hail hurts after a while. I must've been screaming. I don't know how I was still able to scream, but… little kids scream, right? I had been living off of stored food, or starving. I don't know how long I screamed, but people heard. Later, I found out they'd been debating if whether or not to just shoot me to shut me up. They didn't, obviously, but they were close. I don't blame them. I was more trouble than I was worth. An old man, Mr. Singh, he took care of me. About two hundred of us survived… We made our stand in Shangri-La.

[Living Shangri-La is a skyscraper in Vancouver. In peacetime, it was offices, a five-star hotel, and condominiums. Now it shelters returnees whose homes have yet to be cleared.]

Making a stand sounds very dramatic, doesn't it? Like we had a choice. We cleared the building as well as we could, but sixty-one floors… We stuck together. We were always afraid. At night, the youngest ones… we would stand up on the roof. Watch the skyline burn. During the day we took turns shooting at the crowd outside with rifles. It was basically boredom all around. It went on like that until your army finally took the city. Mr. Singh died in the confusion. I got this.

[Navdeep lifts up her sleeve. On her forearm is one long slice.]

I thought… something else was happening. But the young ones… lucky us. We all made it. We all got to see, from the ground, what our homes were like.

**Are most of them still alive today?**

**Yeah… we're alive. We're just not all here. You know how it is. We grew up seeing everything through a television screen. We saw the war from the distance, at the end. When it all finally hits you, you're…**

**[She seems to be struggling to put her thoughts into words. She's gesturing.]**

**You're never really normal again. You get your house back, but you're never home again. **


End file.
